Faker: How to live for real when you're tempted to fake it

by Nicholas T McDonald

Tags: isolation, loneliness, trust issues

Have you ever felt like a pretender? Social networks allow us to paint attractive pictures of our lives. But many of us feel like pretenders. If people knew who we were in reality, would they still care?

What would life look like if we stopped faking?

Excerpts:

..And so we interact with the world at a distance; we’re in a conversation with friends, but we keep slipping back to our iPhone. Why? We’re afraid.

We’ve accumulated a massive list of friends and followers, but few have had dinner at our house. Why? We’re afraid.

We’d rather calculate our words through text than talk face to face. Why? Because you, me, all of us—we’re terrified that people will see us.

And so life is an endless game of peekaboo. But what if I told you there was a way out?

..What would the world be like if no one looked down on anyone else? No mean pranks.

No gossip. No exclusion. No nasty texts. No pornography. No bullying. No commiserating about terrible teachers.

And also, no sex slaves. No terrorists. No rich countries exploiting poor countries. No African apartheid. No Nazis killing Jews.

See, the seeds of gossip and mass-murder are sown in the same moment—one person looks at another and says: “Because of my race, my religion, my education, my clothes, my family, my friends…I’m better.”..